Macbook Pro+external drive

[lkWinnipesaukee]

I'm working on getting a Macbook Pro and an external drive (500gb?) as a desktop replacement. I had a few questions.

-Will 2.4ghz, 2gb of RAM be enough for Photoshop?
-If I put my photos on the external drive, will that bottleneck the system when i try to access it?
-Any accessories you guys recommend?



Thanks

 

[Reel1]

The 2.4 MBP will be plenty for photoshop ( providing it is CS3) 2 gb of ram is great but 4 would be even better.

You will notice a slight slow down with your external drive but is only a minor problem.

 

[usayit]

If you can afford it... max out on memory. Photoshop is memory bound more than CPU.

Depends on your external drive. USB and firewire will both experience a slow down compared to internal drives. Use the internal disk as workspace and an external drive (USB or firewire) as archival.

 

[usayit]

I'd also use an external monitor for final adjustments. Laptop displays are notoriously bad for photo editing...

 

[astrostu]

Internal hard drives are slow on laptops - most of the normal drives are 5400 RPM, and cheap ones are 4200 RPM. Most desktop and external drives are 7200 RPM, so there will be a noticable difference in disk access time. So if the external is connected via something like FW 800, I would almost think it could be faster to read/write to that rather than the internal disk, but I'm not sure how exactly the time compares.

PhotoShop can only access 3 GB of RAM, but more RAM can be used by the system, etc. So I think the Macbook Pros max out at 4 GB, which would still be useful. But I do my work with 1.5 GB of RAM, so it's quite useable.

 

[S2K1]

I have the same MacBook Pro except it's the 2.2GHz version. I still only have the 2GB of RAM, but it handles CS2 fine with very little slowdown. More RAM helps, and the Hard Drive is 5400RPM in standard form so with a Firewire 800 external drive, you shouldn't have any issues.

 

[usayit]

I have the same MacBook Pro except it's the 2.2GHz version. I still only have the 2GB of RAM, but it handles CS2 fine with very little slowdown. More RAM helps, and the Hard Drive is 5400RPM in standard form so with a Firewire 800 external drive, you shouldn't have any issues.

OooooOOOoo.. I didn't realize that the latest version of MacBook Pros have firewire 800. Definitely go with a firewire 800 capable external drive. I have one on my desktop and it is a big difference from both USB and firewire 400.

I also noticed that the MacBook Pro can be ordered with a 160gb 7200rpm internal at a premium of $225. I would definitely consider going with the faster internal.

Also... it is still a good idea to max out the memory. Apple sells their memory at a premium so consider another party. I have always had good experiences from ordering parts from www.macsales.com